Brandon
Q
Snider
& A
ast year’s PDRA Pro Extreme world champion, Bran-
don Snider, quietly made an offseason switch to the Pro
Boost category after acquiring a Roots-blown ’69 Camaro
from the AAP organization. The Alabama native made his
first run in the car at the second race on the 2017 PDRA tour,
the East Coast Nationals at GALOT Motorsports Park. Snider admittedly
struggled with the new combination, failing to qualify for the Pro Boost
field.
“That was a brand-new car, brand-new everything at GALOT,” Snider
said. “We drove straight from (Jerry) Bickel’s to GALOT; barely made it
there and it was a total disaster. No testing whatsoever – first time the
motor fired up was at GALOT.”
After having the opportunity to test between the GALOT race and
the next PDRA event in Darlington,
South Carolina, Snider appeared
to be back in championship form.
He qualified number-one with a
3.721-second pass at 202.07 mph at
the PDRA Spring Nationals at Dar-
lington Dragway, followed up by a
first-round 3.73 at 198.15. A broken
blower belt sent Snider home in the
second round, but the overall week-
end performance was more than
enough to send a warning to the Pro
Boost class that Brandon Snider had
officially arrived.
Drag Illustrated caught up
with Snider in the pits after his num-
ber-one qualify effort Friday night
at the PDRA Spring Nationals. The
outlaw eighth-mile doorslammer
veteran spoke candidly about switch-
ing classes, adjusting to a new com-
bination and his goals for the Pro
Boost entry.
You were at the top of your game last
year, earning six low qualifier awards
and winning three races in six final rounds to claim the Pro Extreme world
championship. Why did you switch to Pro Boost over the winter?
First off, we couldn’t secure enough sponsorship to run the full sched-
ule in Pro Extreme this year. We secured enough for about three races,
and I didn’t want to commit to it and not be able to run the full season. I
had an opportunity to sell the car rolling. It went to a customer of mine in
Australia. Then I was without a car. I was able to go overseas for the Ara-
bian series and help those guys a little bit over there on this car I’m driving
now. At the end of the series, Sheik Khalid gave me the opportunity to
bring the car back here and run it in Pro Boost. I really wanted to run it in
Pro Extreme because I still had my engine, drivetrain and all that but he
was pretty adamant about wanting to run Pro Boost.
In your experience so far, what’s the biggest difference between Pro
Extreme and Pro Boost?
This is a different class, different car, different engine program – every-
thing is different from Pro Extreme. It’s slower. The car reacts different.
The motor wants a different fuel curve. Everything is different. Having
this put in your lap and learning it quickly is a real challenge. It’s a real
challenge for all of us. We’re just going to keep picking at it. By the end of
the year in Virginia, we want the Pro Boost record and we want the car to
run in the mid-to-low 3.60s. That’s what we’re working for by the end of
the year. Then we’ll leave here and go back overseas to run the car in the
winter Arabian series.
What’s the cost difference between running a car in Pro Boost versus Pro
Extreme?
Well, I never went nine runs in a row on the same blower belt with the
Pro Extreme car. We generally changed the blower belt every two passes,
and you can figure they’re $220 per belt. So we’ll eat up $1,200 worth of
belts a weekend just in Pro Extreme.
The Pro Boost car is more forgiving – it has a bigger pulley and less
overdrive. For the record, this is
an NHRA-legal motor. It’s a legal
valve with NHRA 20-percent over-
drive, which they just changed it to
16.5-percent, but it’s an NHRA-legal
motor in this car. We’re in the pro-
cess of building our own engine in-
house. We won’t be able to have it for
Maryland, but it will be in the car at
the next race.
Cost-wise, there are a few benefits.
The Pro Boost combination burns
less fuel. It seems to be a little easier
on the valvetrain because you don’t
have to scream it in high gear down
there at the high rpm. Less boost
doesn’t put the same load on the val-
vetrain. How much cheaper is it? I
don’t know. It still goes through fuel,
oil, tires, bearings and the like, but
it’s still a great deal cheaper than Pro
Extreme, no doubt.
You were nearly perfect in calling
your shots last year. How do you
think you can apply your strategy to
the Pro Boost car even though it’s a different combination?
We were shooting for a .74 and it went a .72, so it’s definitely surprising
me in areas I didn’t think it was capable of doing that. It’s too early in the
game to predict what this thing is going to run. I need probably two more
races on it. Then when Jimmy (Crenshaw) comes and asks me, “What are
we going to run this pass?”, I can pretty much tell him. I just have to know
what the car likes for certain track temps and conditions.
A lot of the teams out here in Pro Boost also compete in NHRA Pro
Mod or have intentions of running NHRA Pro Mod. Is that something
you have intentions of doing in the near future?
That’s my ultimate dream, to be able to run NHRA Pro Mod. If the op-
portunity presents itself then I’d definitely like to do that. But over here
in the PDRA, you get sidetracked doing this because there’s no overdrive
limit or cubic-inch limit. You get into NHRA and you’re limited to 16.5
over, 3-4 gears and it’s quarter mile. When you learn this eighth-mile stuff
and then try to rearrange a legal combination to run NHRA, it’d almost
be like spinning my tires doing that. But it’s something that I would defi-
nitely like to learn – quarter-mile, Roots-blown racing, and we’d like to
do it one da y if the opportunity presents itself.
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By Nate Van Wagnen